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Gov. Cuomo requests meeting with Trump team for guidance on COVID-19 vaccine plan

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is requesting a meeting with President Donald Trump and his team, along with Gov. Asa Hutchinson, of Arkansas, to discuss how COVID-19 vaccines will be administered when they are ready for American public.

News 12 Staff

Oct 15, 2020, 4:39 PM

Updated 1,517 days ago

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo is requesting a meeting with President Donald Trump and his team, along with Gov. Asa Hutchinson, of Arkansas, to discuss how COVID-19 vaccines will be administered when they are ready for American public.
Gov. Cuomo, chair of the National Governors Association, and Hutchinson, vice chair, sent a letter to the president saying, "additional guidance and clarification is needed on the roles and expectations of states in a successful COVID-19 vaccine distribution and implementation plan."
“It’s not checkers, it’s chess,” said the governor in a conference call on Thursday morning. He called administering 20 million vaccines in New York “a massive, monumental undertaking.”
He also said the federal government has shown that it “doesn’t have the operational capacity” to facilitate a vaccine operation for all U.S. citizens.
“It could be just a matter of weeks away if you listen to the White House. It's not that simple, and it’s very expensive and it's complicated,” he said. “This virus has been ahead of us every step of the way, and it’s about time this country catches up.”
Gov. Cuomo also discussed compliance enforcement efforts in red zone COVID-19 clusters. He says the outcry from the ultra-Orthodox community is because they “never complied with any of the close down rules going back to March. That’s why they find this shocking.”
He also said most of the ultra-Orthodox community have been cooperative with the restrictions put in place to slow the spread of COVID-19.
The infection rate in the red zones is 4.84% Without the red zones, it’s 0.99% With the red zones factored in, the infection rate is 1.09%
Gov. Cuomo said that he asked local governments to do testing at schools in yellow zones. He said the state is giving New York City 200,000 test kits for those students.